After helping PMO Director Jane West assemble, process, and present the information she needed to sway Acme CEO Lee Daystrom towards deciding to take the stronger PM approach option, I returned to my usual working hours, but kept an eye on the business section of the local paper to see if Acme’s performance indicators moved. As I predicted, its stock prices dipped in the first couple of months after that fateful meeting, but started climbing again in month three, ultimately surpassing its value prior to my involvement. I also noticed Randy’s advertising campaign, the one announcing Acme’s use of its new technology representing an advancement in quality while lowering costs. It was actually rather clever, and almost certainly contributed to Acme’s stock rebound. Jane herself had said that she would ask me back “in a few month’s time,” but that call never came, which struck me as being perfectly fine. I had helped her find her footing within her new PMO, in an organization that, while not hostile towards Project Management, definitely expected demonstrable results at every turn, and she and her Team had apparently delivered. My sense that Jane, Randy, Lee, and the rest of my clients at Acme would end up being okay in PM space was confirmed when I was in my office late one evening, and saw in the financial section of the paper that not only had Acme added significantly to its market share, its percent increase matched Monolithic’s loss, and rather closely. I re-folded the paper, put my feet up on my desk, and said aloud to nobody in particular, “Another case solved by Stanly Raspberry, Private Eye.”
* * * * *
Meanwhile, back at the executive board room at Monolithic Corporation, the mood was very different.
“How did this happen?” Monolithic’s CEO growled, as he slammed the same financial section of the paper down on the table. One brave VP spoke up, albeit tentatively.
“Tech advances are always hard to predict.”
“Not that, you fool!” the CEO countered. “How did that idiot Daystrom arrive at the optimal strategy for leveraging it?”
A different VP chimed in. “Our inside source says that their new PMO Director, Jane West, brought in Stanly Raspberry, who assembled a usable Corner Cube model in an improbably short time, and that was what led to Daystrom making the right call.”
“Raspberry?!” repeated almost everyone in the room.
“Raspberry” the CEO mumbled, almost spitting the name out.
“Wait, we have an insider at Acme?” a young, naïve exec asked. “Who is it?”
“None of your business” growled the CEO.
“How did Raspberry know about Corner Cube theory?” another VP queried.
“Who knows? He may be actually reading the Project Management Journal, and saw it when it was originally introduced back in the late 90’s. Or he may have read the book Game Theory in Management, where it’s also laid out. But our source claims he actually managed to assemble the model, and fairly accurately place Acme’s performance within it. When Daystrom saw it, he immediately selected the right strategy.”
“Do we know if Acme is going to use that model on an on-going basis?”
“They haven’t asked Raspberry back yet, and the original presentation looked like a one-off, so there’s a real possibility that they only employed it for that one key decision.”
“But their PMO Director, Jane West – she’s no dummy. If she saw Raspberry assemble it, she should be able to replicate that information stream on demand.”
The conference room fell silent for an awkward moment.
“So, what do we do now?”
“About Acme, or about Raspberry?”
“Acme’s CFO – I think his name is Lindstrummer – he’s definitely old-school. Really imbued in that whole ‘maximize shareholder wealth’ business. I’m a little surprised he didn’t push back more when West brought in Raspberry. Lindstrummer might have lost out with respect to this particular decision, but, long-term his focus, combined with his level of influence, will have a detrimental impact on Acme’s ability to maintain their recent surge in market share.”
“Get to the point” the CEO challenged.
“Point is, the do-nothing response might be the most appropriate.”
“I disagree” another exec chimed in. “Now that they know Raspberry’s available and reliable, the next time they come to a similar inflection point in their high-level management decision-making, they’ll pull him back into the mix. We’ve got to do something about Raspberry.”
“Maybe we could have one of our shell companies contract him for some consulting work at Reichenbach Falls.”
At this suggestion, the room immediately sounded as if someone had told a really funny joke at a Darth Vader impersonators’ convention.
“What’s so funny about Reichenbach Falls?” asked the youngest VP.
Next Week: GTIM returns to non-fiction. GTIM Nation will have to wait until my next foray into fables to find out the answer to that last question, and what happens to Stanly Raspberry, Private Eye.
